Katie Thompson has a BA in journalism and design from Ohio State University. She has written for both print and online media, including Ohio-based CityScene Magazine and Web Designer Depot, and has more than seven years experience in web design and development.

For designers approaching a deadline, coffee is a delicious necessity. Lucky for us, having a coffee break is not really difficult. But it's more than just a 3am fix. With every late-night run to the local coffee house, we contribute to a populous network of coffee trading, sales and experience.

And in fact, coffee houses and suppliers are quite a business, with online presences ranging from simple layouts with striking typography to advanced layouts with remarkable photography. Coffee websites: how do they look like? What do they have in common? What metaphors, visuals and typography are they using? Well, this is where this showcase comes handy: let's take a closer look at tasty coffee websites and examine their distinctive features and peculiarities.

Web, industrial, interior… You name it and there are designers for it. We're all trained in our particular areas (as we should be), but it would do us some good sometimes to look beyond our borders for new approaches to design problems. For a fresh perspective, here we'll apply several principles of interior design to Web design and see what ideas would help change some of our stuck-in-a-rut design practices.

In interior design, balance breaks down into two kinds: formal and informal. Formal balance is simple. It is achieved in a room when objects on one side of a room are a mirror-image of the other side of the room. It focuses on symmetry (creating a mirrored effect) and is the easiest to create — just think of two nightstands on either side of a bed or two sconces on either side of a fireplace. However, it can become overwhelming with too many objects or a busy color palette. Too much can make a good design concept ugly.

Subscribe to our email newsletter for useful tips and valuable resources, sent out every second Tuesday.

Meet Smashing Book #5, our new book on real-life responsive design. With front-end techniques and patterns from actual projects, it's a playbook to master all the tricky facets and hurdles of responsive design. Save 25% today.

Fixing RWD issues can be quite easy — once you understand exactly why they come up. The Mobile Web Handbook will help you understand technical issues on mobile and how to deal with them effectively.

Hungry for more content? Over 60 eBooks are waiting to be discovered in our lovely Smashing Library. And guess what? You can watch Smashing Conference talks there, too.

SmashingConf isn't the eighth wonder of the world, but we are pretty close. Join us at at the shores of Santa Monica for SmashingConf LA on April 27–30 or at SmashingConf NYC on June 15–18. You won't be disappointed.